But the story doesn’t begin there, but only later, long after the affair has passed, when suddenly Sarah and Henry once again become part of Bendrix’s life and he tries to piece everything together, to find out why Sarah left him, what precipitated that end.īut the story, as startling as it is when we discover what happened, is only part of this book. But he chooses to tell the story of the end of the affair, of the love that he had for Sarah Miles, of the passionate affair that commenced, throughout the war, until the day, when the V-1 came crashing down, nearly killing Bendrix and definitively killing their affair. It doesn’t start out that way of course, for love never does. Perhaps there is no one he hates more than himself. In the end, it not just God or his lover, Sarah, or her sad-sap husband, Henry that Bendrix has come to hate. In the very first page he warned us “this is a record of hate far more than of love.” In the end, it is very much a record of hate, a book as full of anger and pain as anything not written by Philip Roth. The Novel: “I hate You, God, I hate You as though You existed,” Maurice Bendrix says at the conclusion of the novel.

Edward Dmytryk), 1999 (**** – #3 of the year, dir.

Last Line: “I wrote at the start that this was a record of hate, and walking there beside Henry towards the evening glass of beer, I found the one prayer that seemed to serve the winter mood: O God, You’ve done enough, You’ve robbed me of enough, I’m too tired and old to learn to love, leave me alone for ever.”.

First Line: “A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.”.

Pages: 192 (Penguin 20th Century Classics).

Paperback.Graham Greene’s record of hate: The End of the Affair (1951)

After a chance meeting rekindles his love and jealousy two years later, Bendix hires a private detective to follow Sarah, and slowly his love for her turns into an obsession.

The love affair between Maurice Bendix and Sarah, flourishing in the turbulent times of the London Blitz, ends when she suddenly and without explanation breaks it off.

The end of the affair by graham greene